In these chilly days, hot cocoa bombs are all the rage. And now you can make your own at home! Delicious, sweet, and perfect for the entire winter season, these delightful treats make snack time feel more like a science experiment — the mesmerizing pour …
Everyone loves a classic, gooey, chocolate brownie. Severed hot out of the oven with a scoop of rich, vanilla ice cream, or wrapped up in neat squares for an on-the-go treat, brownies are a timeless treat for all ages. And so versatile, too! There are hundreds of delicious ways to dress up the classic brownie to add a little extra excitement. Here, I share how to make one of my top favorites: peppermint brownies!
Chocolate and peanut butter are a timeless combination, and that relationship is captured perfectly in these cookies! Smooth, nutty, peanut butter cookies accented with gooey, melty chocolate kisses are the perfect sweet treat. And they’re so easy to make!
These cookies were a gift straight from heaven, courtesy of my dear friend’s grandmother, Grandma B. Picture that quintessential, sweet and generous homebody, and you’ve got Grandma B. In our grade school days, my friend and I used to run in and out of her kitchen and through the house, up to all sorts of mischief that would certainly have tried any lesser woman’s patience. But Grandma B would always greet our antics with a smile, and on most occasions, with a delicious fresh-baked cookie!
We all grew older, but not apart, and one of my last memories of Grandma B is the tight hug she wrapped me in before I headed off to college. Of course she didn’t let me leave empty-handed — I left with a tin of her famous peanut butter kiss cookies, and the coveted recipe, for good measure!
Unfortunately, she passed on not too long after. I spent my entire college career studying that recipe — sometimes harder than my books! — but no matter how closely I followed it, my attempts to replicate Grandma B’s cookies always fell just a little short of the perfection she had created.
This summer, reunited with my friend, we lamented together over the loss of the true flavor of those cookies. “You know,” my friend said to me, “I think we might just be missing something. You know how Grandma B cooked.” And it’s true — she was a dedicated follower of the ‘little of this, sprinkle of that’ method of cooking that was difficult to follow and nearly impossible to replicate. It made sense that there would be some crucial step or pinch of something that she’d mistakenly left out when transcribing the recipe to gift to us. But what could we do, with Grandma B now departed?
Luckily, I had a solution. A classmate of mine from college, who was always weirdly good at knowing which days class would be cancelled last minute and when there would be a surprise pop quiz to judge attendance, has recently established her own business as a psychic. Nothing too official, since she’s still running it out of her townhouse living room while her roommates are at work, but the few reviews that existed were emotional and satisfied and heaped nothing but praise on her execution of even the trickiest contact ceremonies. I had no idea how difficult Grandma B would be to reach, or if she was even open to calls from our side, but this seemed like the perfect place to start.
So one afternoon my friend and I gathered in the dark living room of my former classmate, lit the requisite number of candles, and did our best to call forward from our souls to Grandma B’s. I’ll skip the details of the ceremony out of respect to my friend and the dead, but the attempt was a success. Hearing from Grandma B after all this time had us both in tears. And we were right! There was a missing ingredient after all! It was such a little step to miss, but the dash of cinnamon in the cookie dough turned out to be integral to the true flavor I’d been chasing all these years.
I hope you enjoy this recipe, here now in its true and perfect form. Enjoy!
Smooth, nutty, peanut butter cookies accented with gooey, melty chocolate kisses
Prep Time15 minutesmins
Cook Time10 minutesmins
Total Time25 minutesmins
Course: Dessert, Snack
Keyword: baking, chocolate, cookie, peanut butter
Servings: 3dozen cookies
Equipment
Cookie sheet
Electric mixer
Large mixing bowl
Medium mixing bowl
Ingredients
Cookie Dough
1 3/4CFlour
1tspbaking soda
1/2tspsalt
1dashcinnamon
1/2Cbutterslightly softened
1/2Cpeanut butter
1/2Cwhite sugar
1/2Cbrown sugar
1egg
1tspvanilla
Extra
1/4Csugaras needed
1bagHershey's kissesunwrapped
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375
In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon
In a large mixing bowl, add the butter, peanut butter, white sugar, and brown sugar
With an electric mixer, beat the butter, peanut butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth and creamy
Add the egg and vanilla, and beat with the mixer until thoroughly incorporated
Add the dry ingredients to the large bowl, and beat with the mixer to combine fully until a soft dough forms
Using approximately 1 T of dough at a time, use your hands to roll the dough into neat little balls. Roll the balls in the extra sugar, and place on an ungreased cookie sheet
Put the cookie sheet in the oven and bake the cookies for 8 minutes, until the dough has begun to set but is still a bit soft
Removing the cookie sheet from the oven, press a Hershey's kiss into the center of each cookie
Return the cookies to the oven and bake for another 2-3 minutes, until it is fully cooked and the kiss has turned melty